Two years ago during the Giants’ championship run Barry Zito wasn’t even on the playoff roster, but now he’s starting Game 5 of the NLCS tonight with their season on the line.

The good news is that the Giants have won 12 straight Zito starts dating back to August 7.

The bad news is that win streak included Zito failing to make it out of the third inning against the Reds in the NLDS and his overall ERA in those 12 starts is 4.04. In other words, he hasn’t exactly been the driving force behind the dozen consecutive victories.

It will be Zito’s ninth career playoff start, but he hasn’t thrown more than four innings in a postseason outing since the ALDS in 2006, when he tossed eight innings of one-run ball versus Minnesota. To get a sense of how long ago that was, Frank Thomas was the A’s cleanup hitter and Johan Santana started for the Twins.

If the Giants can win tonight they’ll have Ryan Vogelsong and Matt Cain lined up for Games 6 and 7, but first they’ll need Zito to earn a big chunk of his much-maligned $127 million contract.

I’ll predict a small chance of a Giants win, only because it’s just that crazy to do so, and that’s how the postseason has gone so far. Win or lose, I’ll be pretty happy with how much the team did with what they had.

2013 is another matter. No matter how they do for the rest of this season, there are major changes that need to be made. Not enough upgrades will come from within their own organization.

I’m envious of teams that actually produce multiple position players from their own farm systems, and don’t have to go out and piece together a team year after year, with the hope that it’ll all somehow work out.

It has come to this, has it? Zits. Its all up to Zits. Jeez. All season long I didn’t rely on this guy for anything, now a portion of my future baseball watching for the remainder of this season rests on his unreliable shoulders. Jeez.